


Her Own Toughest Critic

by Fairfaxleasee



Series: Fenris/Cassia [6]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, Autism, Blood, Dissociation, F/M, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:47:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26818327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fairfaxleasee/pseuds/Fairfaxleasee
Summary: After a failed Wicked Grace game Hawke shares some of her self-doubt with Fenris.  Set in Act 3 before doing Fenris's personal questline.
Relationships: Female Hawke & Varric Tethras, Fenris/Female Hawke
Series: Fenris/Cassia [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2141970
Kudos: 11





	Her Own Toughest Critic

"This was a mistake." Cassia Hawke's statement left little room for debate but never being one to leave unnecessary loose ends she shoved what little remained of her money into the pot and threw her unseen hand face up on the table.

_ Or are you supposed to fold face down? _

The thought barely registered, days spent memorizing the rules of Wicked Grace might as well have been used learning to gavot so she could dance with the men that didn't interest her at the parties she refused to attend.

"Oh, so this whole time you weren't losing on purpose?"

"Not helping, Blondie. Jigsaw, wait, I-"

But Cass just shut her eyes and bit down on her bottom lip as she got up from the table and started for the door.

_ Whatever the fuck else you do on this shipwreck of an evening don't you fucking dare start crying until you make it out the damn door! _

But it was too late. The tears had started to fall before her cards hit the table, and no matter how much she might hate herself for them, she was powerless to stop them.

_ Which, if you think about it, is why this whole thing was such an unmitigated disaster, which you knew going into this, meaning either you knew this is how it would end and were stupid enough to do it anyway or you were stupid enough to think you could will it to be different it so either way this is exactly what you deserve. _

_ Shows what you know Ms Voice-in-my-Head, I did both! _

Cass knew fighting the voice only made things worse, she was really never going to hear the end of somehow managing to find a way to be wrong twice about one thing, but she couldn't resist pointing out faulty premises, even when they were her own. 

_ Except when Fenris is involved. Which is how you went and got yourself into this mess in the first place, isn’t it? _

Cass had an exceptional memory so she could clearly see everything that had led to this played out in her mind as she was compelled to look on and agonize over all the chances she didn’t take to avoid what had happened in excruciating detail. She was vaguely aware that the forced reflection was the point of the endeavor, that maybe, possibly, this time would be the one where she finally learned enough from the humiliating, inevitable failure to know better next time.

But what she quipped to the voice before had been true, she had known better this time. And she had done it anyway because she wanted so badly for it to have been different. Because Fenris had been involved.

Cass slumped into a nearby wall and let herself slowly slide to sit on the ground burying her head in her hands. 

It was no small secret that Cass hadn't gotten over what had happened between them three years ago, even if no one knew the exact details. Every time she thought about it she could somehow see everything in perfect clarity while simultaneously not being able to recall any of the specific details. When people asked her about it she could remember him turning away, recoiling when she reached out for him, and the finality of the door closing while she sobbed her pain to no one in the empty room, somehow feeling more alone in that moment than when her brother died buying the rest of them time from the ogre, when her sister died at her own hand somewhere in the Deep Roads, or even when her mother died again after she had killed the blood mage who made her part of his demented patchwork doll.

Not that she would have been able to articulate that to anyone even if she had wanted to. Her mother had needled before she died, Isabella had tried to insist Cass trade 'war stories' with her, Sebastian had offered to pray with her, which made Cass actually consider Isabella's idea a reasonable alternative, but she never wanted to discuss it with any of them, or anyone else for that matter. Not that that stopped the questions and whispers. While her friends and associates mostly left it alone now (it had taken Aveline threatening to turn Anders in to the Templars to finally make him stop bringing it up), every now and then one of them in the misguided thrall of ‘good intentions’ would try and get the whole humiliating story. But whenever she was pressed on the issue some part of her just broke and she stopped being aware of anything except how much it hurt just to breathe. Even the voice that usually replayed her sins and mistakes to make her fully appreciate and agonize over all the times and ways she could have done things right was quiet then, squeezed out of her head by whatever constricted her chest.

_ Ah, now we’re getting somewhere, aren’t we? That’s what you’re afraid of - he couldn’t even stand you when you were pretending to be normal, just what would he have done if he had a sense of just how fucked up you really are? You have to be pretty fucked up to have let this play out the way it has. _

_ You knew something was up the second Varric walked in the door. _

He had said he was there to play Diamondback, but that had been at best a clumsy excuse, because, while they never actually scheduled their games, they usually played every few weeks and at the last one, which had been less than a week prior, Varric had made Hawke promise to have the next one at the Hanged Man after Squall had run into the table (the mabari was, of course, fine; the table wasn’t) and cost Varric, according to him, the first game he would have beaten her at where she had actually been dealt decent cards. But Cass had had nothing better to do and this would give her an excuse not to go to the Hanged Man, and any excuse not to go to the Hanged Man was a good excuse. Not to mention that while Varric was clearly up to something, Cass had no idea exactly what that something was and she couldn’t resist trying to figure out what it was before he would tell her.

‘Convince Cassia Hawke to play Wicked Grace with everyone’ hadn’t even crossed her mind.

“Come on, it’s one night of playing cards. What’s the worst that could happen?”

“Do you want me to answer your question or would you accept a catalogue of exactly what happened after every time you asked that question before now. And in the case of the later would you prefer it be chronological or alphabetical?”

“Jigsaw, everyone is tired of seeing you do nothing but mope around your house alone.”

“If I’m so alone how are you all seeing me?”

“I’m serious, Jigsaw. You need to get out sometimes.”

“I get out-”

“And it doesn’t count if while you’re out someone ends up on the wrong end of a dagger.”

Cass sighed and turned away. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to ‘go out and have fun,’ it was just that whenever she went out, it was never fun. Cass had been made acutely aware that her definition of 'fun' was fundamentally flawed and wasn't particularly in the mood for a refresher on the subject. 

“Sorry Varric, I’m cultivating the rumor that I’m actually a vampire and need to lock myself in at night to avoid preying on the innocent so idiots will stop inviting me to parties and if I go out after sunset the whole story collapses.”

“Jigsaw, you have to actually talk to people to cultivate rumors. By my count, since what happened with the Qunari, you’ve willingly spoken to exactly seven people: me, Ravini, Choir Boy, Avaline, Bodhan, Sandal, and Oriana. And none of us are telling people you’re a vampire. I may have tried out a story where you were a mermaid but it never really took off.”

“Sounds like it didn’t have a leg to stand on.”

“Funny. And as for the parties, you’re the Champion of Kirkwall, one of the richest women in the city, and single. You could be an ancient darkspawn and you’d still get invited to all the parties.”

“Well I guess I can stop spreading rumors about that then.”

“Look, you’ll know everybody there. There’s no way Choir Boy will come to the Hanged Man to play Wicked Grace, and you’re not on the best terms with Blondie or Daisy…”

“Way to sell the idea, Varric…”

“But Fenris never misses a game when he’s in town.”

Cass’s entire body stiffened and she looked back.

“...I thought you called him ‘Elf.’”

“Yeah, well, I thought it was time to try new things.”

Cass didn’t move, but her eyes slowly shifted to rest on an empty corner of the room. She swallowed a few times before she finally managed to whisper, “Varric you don’t understand. I can’t play Wicked Grace.”

“Jigsaw, it took you about six months to learn more about Kirkwell law than Seneschal Bran when you decided you were tired of listening to him. You can learn the rules of Wicked Grace by next week.”

Cass scoffed softly and ran her nails along the back of her hand, “It’s not the rules I’m worried about,” she managed.

“I will teach you how to play myself. I promise everything will be fine.”

Cass grinned ruefully. “You really shouldn’t make promises that aren’t in your power to keep you know.”

“Look, I won’t tell him you’re coming so he can’t deliberately avoid you and if he doesn’t come you can just slip out, deal?”

“This is a stupid deal.”

“When has a deal with me ever been stupid? Don’t bother answering that.”

Cass may have acquired enough of the idea of the rules of Wicked Grace to satisfy Varric without any particular effort, but that didn’t help her play any. Neither did being in the chaos of the Hanged Man, with its drunken patrons, off-key minstrels, and annoyed workers all vying to stand out in the din while flitting through her peripheral vision and passing far too close for her comfort making focus impossible. But Cass could have had a definitive rulebook at her fingertips and they could have been playing on a deserted island and she would have done just as terribly. Pit her against a Darkspawn army that overran her position and she could scout a way out through a weak flank. Lock her in the Deep Roads and she could work out a way to double-back and escape. Put her toe-to-toe with the Arishok and she could come out entirely unscathed (even if she had liked that butterfly knife). But put her in a group of people where all she had to do was follow basic social cues and be normal and she was fucking useless.

“Hawke!”

Hearing the voice was like being doused with cold water and Cass started. Her first sensation was the dull throb in her head where she must have just hit it on the wall she was sitting against followed by the faint smell and coppery taste of her own blood. She glanced down at her hands-she had definitely been at her nails again but couldn’t quite tell if the blood was from those jagged stumps or the areas of her neck and chest that still burned as she breathed which she had either gotten to before she had chewed most of her nails off or after she hadn’t chewed enough of them off.

“Hawke, when you left like that, Varric was…”

Fenris started towards her then, she wasn’t sure if he stopped speaking or if she just stopped hearing him, she was still present enough to hear the dull ringing that had drowned out all other sounds once her nerves were sufficiently frayed. There was no stopping that, but she could try to place his gait. Cass was hopeless with expressions and body language at the best of times, and between trying to keep up with the card game, failing pathetically, and remembering everything she had done wrong leading up to those she was too mentally exhausted to even give it a good try. He was...excited? No, that was clearly wrong. Agitated? That was closer but still not right. Hawke tilted her head, it never helped but it at least made her look reactive, even if that reaction just meant she had no idea how to react.

_ Oh, it’s probably angry. It’s always angry, they figure out you’re faking everything and they get angry at what you don’t understand. You ruined the card game and now he’s angry because you can’t even act normal long enough to play a stupid card game. _

It was never a good sign when the voice sounded exhausted. Cass’s skin was starting to feel too tight again, she raised her hand to her neck so she could just get some respite from the suffocating tightness. But something stopped it, she tried again only for whatever was stopping her to pull her hand away from its target and grab the other. She forced herself back into herself enough to realize that it was Fenris, kneeling in front of her and holding her wrists. She tried to jerk them back, but Fenris just pulled them even further from where Cass wanted, needed, them to go.

Fenris leaned closer to her.

“Hawke, did you hear what I said?”

Cass had barely heard that. The only response she could muster was to stop resisting and turn her gaze as far from Fenris as she could without moving her head. 

Cass half hoped the voice would come back, remind her that now she’d done it, that any chance she had of Fenris thinking she was anything other than fundamentally broken freak was long gone now, but she knew that the voice was just her. Her saying the ‘I told you so’s. Her trying to head off the future mistakes that she knew she was going to make anyways. Her never quite being able to forget how much she hated all the pretending she did just to try and fit in just well enough to, if not fit in, she had never been good enough to fit in, at least not draw attention to everything she wasn’t. But at times like this, when all the pretending had gotten too exhausting, when all the ‘I told you so’s had been said, when her mistakes and the easy ways she could have avoided them had been properly catalogued only to be entirely ignored when they could serve her in the future, when she couldn’t muster the energy to even try anymore she knew all that was about to happen was her fair punishment-to watch the consequences of her bad decisions and botched deception play themselves out while she sat trapped in her own head and powerless to stop them.

Fenris had shifted to meet her gaze again.

“Hawke, are you listening?”

_ Yes. _

It might take a while for Cass to actually be able to speak again, but she could hear what he was saying clearly. She darted her eyes to steadily meet his, then quickly turned them away again, hoping to signal in some way that she was at least listening.

“Hawke, everyone was worried about you when you left like that.”

_ Oh, fuck, the slow, calm pity voice! _

Cass hated the slow, calm pity voice; the fact it was the only one she managed to get right every time was just salt in the wound. At least with the anger once it was done they left her alone, but with the slow, calm pity voice they kept trying to fix her. Until they realized she was unfixable, got angry, and left her alone. And it was the trying to fix her part that she really couldn’t stand, it always hurt and it usually just made everything worse, like now. 

She squeezed her eyes shut.

“I was...am worried about you, Ha...Cassia.”

Cass wasn’t sure if she was meant to have heard that. Even with her eyes closed and the fog that surrounded her when she was like this she had felt him move around her. Letting go of her wrists to rest his forearms on the wall on either side of her head. Leaning his body so, so close to hers but not quite touching. And whispering the words into her loose auburn curls where they had fallen out of their braid into a loose knot at the back of her head.

_ But he had to know I’d hear him use my name… right? _

Fenris hadn’t asked her name until they went to the Deep Roads, he said he just thought Hawke WAS her name, explaining that everyone called her that and “Ferelden names are odd anyway.” Cass still wasn’t sure whether this was actually true, if he was just fabricating an excuse to justify his delay in asking, or if he had known the entire time and wanted a cover for not having used it, or possibly permission to start. In better times she had tried to coax the truth out of him but only got maddeningly coy and ambiguous half-answers, which had only made the game more fun. But even once Cass was sure he knew it he quickly eschewed Cassia for Cass, which she generally preferred anyway. The only people to use her full name with any regularity were her parents or siblings, and it usually led to unpleasant exchanges best, if never quite, forgotten. But Fenris would use Cassia when he had something particularly important for her to hear. He had moaned it, screamed it that night three years ago. She remembered how it felt when he said it against her skin, how it tasted when she kissed him when it was on his mouth. But this was the first time she had heard it since. When it was over and she woke up, she was back to Hawke. Hawke, like when she was a hired blade to be a distraction. Hawke, like when she was something that could be left behind and forgotten. Hawke, like when she didn’t think he thought she was worth his time. 

_ I must have done something wrong. Why can’t I figure out what I did wrong? How can I fix it if I don’t understand why I was wrong? _

But focusing on that wasn’t going to help her now. At least being Cassia again was enough to jolt her at least part way out of the suffocating numbness she never managed to escape for good.

“Why?” she managed to whisper.

He shifted to lift his right arm from the wall and trace his hand close enough to her face that she could feel his warmth.

“For now can you let it be enough that I am?”

\---------------------------------------------------------------

Cass sighed and went completely limp against the wall. Her head lolled to one side, her knees to the other as all the tension Fenris only truly realized was there in its absence left with that breath. His hand grabbed her chin before he could stop himself, breaking his promise to himself never to let himself get too close again after he saw the pain his greatest mistake had caused her, pulling her face back to his trying to find her behind her kaleidoscope eyes, that danced between grey, blue, hazel, and occasionally green with the light and her clothes, but Cassia Hawke was nowhere to be found there now. He had seen these empty eyes often enough in Tevinter, the thralls that had spent too much time under a blood mage’s influence had them whenever they weren’t being ‘used’ but there was no magic at work here. Something else had done this to Cass, something Fenris didn’t understand, something he hadn’t even considered could be before. Something that she would never be free of. Something he couldn’t protect her from.

Fenris watched, unsure what else he could do, watched and waited. Tears started to flow from her eyes, and while he was relieved at this evidence that Cassia hadn’t been erased entirely, that he hadn’t lost her forever, he was dismayed to see that all that was filling the empty void was pain, sadness, and defeat.

Her unfocused eyes wouldn’t meet his, but she was at least speaking again.

“That is not...what I was asking...”

He didn’t dare interrupt, Cass had always been a woman who would do things in her own time, and Fenris knew that any attempts to force or rush her would only cause her to resist, or withdraw entirely, which was the last thing Fenris wanted her to do right now.

“I was not...questioning...your motivations. I wish an explanation of...what about this causes the worry.”

Fenris was taken aback. Cass was, without question, one of the smartest people he had ever known. Cass could see patterns, spot inconsistencies and contradictions, and play out possibilities and eventualities in her head with such speed, precision, and clarity that, had they been in Tevinter, he would have assumed she had been magically augmented. How could such a brilliant woman not see how the sight of her covered in angry, self-inflicted wounds was cause for concern?

“Hawke, this isn’t…”

Fenris wasn’t sure how he intended to finish the sentence, but it wouldn’t have been any of the ways that came bursting forth from Cass’s mouth like water from a broken dam.

“Isn’t? Isn’t what? Isn’t normal? Isn’t right? Isn’t what it’s supposed to be? Isn’t what I’m supposed to be? Isn’t what anyone wants to see? Isn’t what anyone wants to hear? Isn’t what anyone wants me to do? Isn’t what anyone wants me to be? Isn't how anyone wants me to be? Isn’t anything other than stupid, pathetic, broken, and worthless?”

“You are none of those things.”

“YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT I AM!”

Cass stopped at that, Fenris was terrified she would disappear again but had no idea what he could do to stop it.

“You don’t know what I am. But...I guess...you should. I’m tired...of pretending...of trying to be...right. I should...explain...what I am. You’ve already seen it. There’s nothing to lose anymore.”

Cass turned her head and body to face him at this, but her eyes remained pulled away. It suddenly occurred to Fenris that Cassia had never really held eye contact. Her eyes would wander in most conversations, he had thought it was just her mind racing ahead of her words or working on something else entirely but this was the first time he had thought it was not that she  _ didn’t _ hold eye contact, it was that she  _ couldn’t _ hold eye contact.

“Do you remember Kelder?”

Cass was speaking so softly now that Fenris had almost missed it. The name didn’t have an obvious meaning to him, but he was positive that it was incredibly important to her so he thought back trying to remember. 

It was no good, he had met many people with Hawke, most of whom didn’t survive the encounter, and whoever this Kelder is, or was, Fenris didn’t remember.

“I’m sorry, I don’t.”

“It was before the Deep Roads. The Magistrate’s son.”

“The coward who thought demons were making him kill elves?”

Cass flinched his words as though he had struck her and Fenris regretted them instantly.

“That’s how everyone saw it, isn’t it?”

Fenris rifled through his memory of the event for something he was missing. Yes, he remembered Kelder now. He remembered finding him in his cave, his desperate protestations that the bodies at his feet weren’t there through any fault of his own, his insistence that demons were possessing him even while saying that the templars had found none. He remembered...the memory rushed over him pushing everything else out for an instant. He remembered Cassia, standing in the middle of the room, as Anders decried Kelder as a liar who was just making excuses for himself, muttering to the shadows in a corner, “I don’t think he’s lying the way you mean it.” Fenris hadn’t thought about those words again before now, he had been as angry and disappointed as the rest of the party at Cass’s decision to bring Kelder back alive, he now had a vague recollection of meaning to ask Cass why she had done what she did but had never bothered to, in fact he hadn’t really thought of what had happened since. It was obvious Cass hadn’t forgotten about it since.

Statements were clearly his enemy here, so he decided to shift to questions.

“How did you see it?”

Cass raised her eyes to his and in that moment he could see not only her profound pain, but that this and so many other events were branded into her as surely and irrevocably as the lyrium that burned under his skin. And that she was about to show him a part of herself that she was terrified of anyone seeing.

“As someone who sees...someone who  _ is _ her own demons.”

“You are not a demon Cassia.”

“Am I not?”

A puff of air that was something between a laugh and a sigh.

“Maybe not. But I am clearly something that does not belong in this world. Something that will always be wrong. Something that cannot be accepted. Or forgiven.”

And with that she was gone again. Her eyes drifted away from his and closed. At first he was terrified that they would never open again, that she had hurt herself worse than he had realized and that he had sat and watched while the woman he loved bled out in a Lowtown alley.

_ The woman he loved. _

He thought on that as he half led, half carried her back to her estate, it was easier than considering everything that could have happened to her if he hadn’t managed to find her after she had left the Hanged Man. Champion of Kirkwall or not, an unresponsive woman alone in a Lowtown alley at night was unlikely to be alive in the morning. Yes, he loved Cassia Hawke. He loved her brilliance, loved her smile, loved her wit, loved her laughter. Loved the careful consideration with which she approached decisions. Loved how much she had to think about everything. Loved how she had never cared that he was an elf or an escaped slave. Loved the patience she had with him. Loved how she would always be there when he needed her.

And he loved her even as she sat crippled by pain and doubt in the alley, showing him a hidden piece of herself even if it was just because she was too tired to hide it anymore, needing him every bit as much as he had ever needed her.

Cassia had clearly been afraid that Fenris would see her as a monster after what she had shown him, that this would cause him to turn away and leave. Ironic, then, that he was considering doing just that because he did not. Before tonight, Fenris had always considered Cassia Hawke to be invulnerable. No matter what challenge or tragedy Thedas had thrown at her, she had always managed to walk away and carry on. Even as he tried to outrun her sobs that night three years ago, he hadn’t considered that he, or anyone else, could ever really do anything to actually hurt her in the long run. He had been surprised that it was taking so long, but he had been sure that it would only be a matter of time until he, like so much else in her life, would be brushed off and forgotten, which would have been no more than he deserved even if he had been hoping that once what he had done had been brushed off she would be willing to forgive him for it. As he watched her cry in that alley he realized just how wrong he had been. Cassia Hawke had never brushed off or forgotten anything. She had just acquired so many scars and bruises and gotten so used to the pain that they were invisible to almost everyone. But that didn’t, couldn’t make him love her less. It did make him consider though. Consider whether he was good enough, strong enough,  _ enough  _ enough to be with Cassia the way she needed, deserved, someone to be with her. Before tonight he had been avoiding her because he wasn’t ready to beg forgiveness and have it denied. To risk the first time she refused him be the time he wanted her assent the most. He was ready to hear ‘no’ now, but he knew that it mattered more that he was ready to hear ‘yes.’ That he was prepared to be everything to her, the way she was already everything to him.


End file.
